Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday November 07, 2015 @06:30AM
from the this-one-goes-in-your-bone-marrow dept.

sciencehabit writes: A controversial fertility company called OvaScience is preoccupied by an enduring mystery in human biology--why eggs fail--and the palpable hope that we can do something about it. The company offers a new treatment, called AUGMENT, based on what it considers to be egg precursor cells found in a woman's ovaries. AUGMENT, which costs UP TO $25,000, along with thousands more in clinic fees and roughly $25,000 for the IVF cycle that must accompany it, relies on mitochondria from putative egg precursor cells to boost the success of in vitro fertilization (IVF). Seventeen babies have been born so far. The company, which has attracted hundreds of millions of dollars from investors, is poised to introduce a second treatment. But many scientists doubt that egg precursor cells actually exist.

First of all your original question is nonsense, the planet is in no way 'overpopulated', you are showing your dictatorial attitudes there. Secondly being able to buy something with a stack of cash is the most fair and democratic way to distribute resources (and services) as long as the system is a free market capitalism (which is hard to find nowadays). You get your free fair shot at the end of each intercourse. If you don't have somebody to do that with, who is supposed to provide you with a fair shot

Hush! Why do you want more fertile people, this planet is overpopulated as it is!

Even China, which until last week, had a one child policy, now has relaxed that to two. Reason is that they think they have a shortage of people - despite it being well above a billion. Should say something.

A good solution to the population problem could be exchange of populations. If Russia and India swapped populations, the density would be pretty even. You could fit India's entire population comfortably in Siberia, and send all Russians into India. One would then realize whether the world is ov

China did not eliminate its one child policy because it wanted more population growth. It has in fact been relaxing it for years and did away with it entirely because of the social problems it causes:

* in traditional Chinese culture male offspring are highly valued and when allowed only one child many couples abort female fetuses. In rare but all too numerous cases newborn girls have even been killed just after birth. The result is that there are 10s of millions more men in China than women now. The one child policy has been relaxed for years to allow women to have a second child if their first was female to help balance the population. This has virtually eliminated infanticide but has been slow in re balancing population.

* measures to enforce one child policy have been very cruel, such as the common policy of denying anaesthetic to women in labour with their second child and clawback of social assistance and forced sterilisation of women without consent immediately after the birth of a child.

* the significantly greater number of young men to young women has been attributed to problems with sex crimes from human trafficking to gang rapes, though much of the evidence is anecdotal

* there are now a couple of generations of people in China raised as only children. These children have been doted upon and spoiled rotten by parents and grandparents all their lives, turning many of them into entitled "little emperors". The lack of empathy towards others and lack of respect towards elders has been unsettling to older Chinese where those traits are very important in traditional culture. It has led to institutionalisation of seniors that was almost unheard of as well as exploitation of workers and in extreme, occasional cases, incidents such as people ignoring a toddler run over by a car dying in the street while everyone goes on about their business.

Anyways population is self limiting as societies develop and direct population control has been shown to backfire. Allowing those with the means and desire to have fertility treatments to conceive is probably a net benefit to society on the whole when properly regulated. At least these parents really want to be parents and have the means and the drive to be good parents.

That's like saying he was pro-Russian. He was a psychopath. He would use anyone to further his objective. Then when they were not useful anymore and not in his plan - they'd be killed just like he turned on the Russians.

The enemy of your enemy may still be your enemy as well. Use your brain. Don't get lazy. If you don't, it can often get you killed.

I'm not a star wars fan, but I think that's MIDICHORIONS or something similar which you're confusing with MITOCHONDRIA (which are real things in our universe, and certainly do affect general fitness post-partum, and probably also affect fitness pre-partum.

Or, you know, you could spend that money helping out children who already exist and who could really use some support. Why do humans feel the need to 'own' everything, even other life forms that have free will of their own?

I don't see the logic behind rewarding irresponsible people when they irresponsibly have children and expecting the kids to somehow turn out responsible. If someone is temporarily poor that's one thing. But if you are a single mom without a job and no prospect of ever having work or a husband the right thing to do if you can't afford the child is to give it up for adoption so it can be raised by responsible people. That way nobody has kids they can't afford just to get a bigger check and those that are infe

That is a very controversial topic; the variables that impact evolution are usually too complex to extract simple conclusions like those. Some defend that the group's survival may trump that more simplistic view, and that men in the small hunter-gatherer groups from which our species originated didn't really distinguish between "their" babies and other's; they were just babies of the group. It's argued that the idea that a baby would have only one male parent wasn't prevalent as well, which might have come

The thing about babies is that when they arrive they change everything in your life. Some for the better and some worse. Generally they mostly change your attitude about life for most people. There are some sad exceptions though.

We have too many humans on this planet already, we don't need more ways to make more humans! You want to raise a child? Go adopt one, there are plenty of children out there without families to take care of them, and you'll be doing human civilization in general several favors in the process, not the least of which is ensuring that one or more human children have a better chance of growing up to be well-adjusted and successful members of society, instead of being all screwed up because they bounced back and